


Haunted

by keinekatze132



Series: River and the 13th Doctor [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, No Gore, halloween fic, no strong violence, some slightly spooky situations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-26 23:15:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21108770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keinekatze132/pseuds/keinekatze132
Summary: Halloween fic. The 13th Doctor and River Song investigate a haunted mansion.





	Haunted

**Author's Note:**

> See endnotes for a complete list of “scary content” (spoilers)

The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS and inhaled the cold air. The smell of the 21st century’s London was comfortingly familiar. Her fam followed her outside, visibly tired after their latest adventure. Yaz shivered and closed her jacket. It had become cold outside in the last weeks. They almost hadn’t noticed how autumn had begun, busy as they were.

Graham yawned. “Alright, Ryan and I are going home” he said, “If you want, you can come along, doc. The guest room is always prepared for you”.

She could feel her face light up. It was weird, but lately she had found herself enjoying some calm days once in a while. She looked up to the stars. They would be fine without her for the weekend. Something about the night sky was off though. She frowned and concentrated. It was the moon. It looked different than it was supposed to do around this time.

“Do you see that?” she asked. Everyone else squinted at the sky as well. “The moon,” she said, “It has a crater more than usual”.

“How?” she could hear Yaz whisper.

“That’s an excellent question” the Doctor said, already walking back to her TARDIS. “I’ll check it out real quick. See you at your place Graham, Ryan. Bye Yaz!”

“Be careful, Doctor!” Ryan said.

Graham put an arm around Ryan and Yaz’s shoulders. “Come on, Yaz. We’ll walk you home” he said. “It’s on our way anyway”.

The three of them left, speculating about what happened to the moon. The Doctor watched them with a fond smile as she closed the doors behind herself.

“Come on, let’s find out what’s going on” she whispered to the TARDIS. She couldn’t help herself but feel exited. It was the kind of mystery she loved most.

She landed on the edge of the new crater. The air was still dusty from whatever caused that much damage to the moon’s surface. Rocks were scattered everywhere, even more than they were usually on the moon. The doctor tried to look into the center of the crater, but she couldn’t see far in the dust. She squinted and saw, what looked like the moving silhouette of a person.

“Hey! Stop right there!” she said out loud. The person froze and put their hands up. The Doctor stepped closer, afraid of any traps. She started to make out features of the person in front of her. She knew the woman.

“River?” she asked, not able to restrain the joy from her voice.

“Hello sweetie” her wife said.

The Doctor grinned. River and her adventures had become rare lately. “Do you have any idea who did this?” she asked.

River laughed. “Take a guess” she said.

The Doctor looked at her horrified. “Did you just blow up the moon to get my attention?” she asked.

River shrugged. “I only blew it up a little”.

“River!” the Doctor tried to sound strict.

“What?” she asked. “Stuff blows up the moon all the time! Also it’s been awful hard to find you lately”. She closed the space between them and pulled her into a kiss. The Doctor noticed she wasn’t mad at all as she leaned into it.

“You’re glad you didn’t wake the dragon on the inside” she said, pointing to the ground. River looked at her, not sure if she was joking. “Anyway what did you need?” the Doctor asked.

“Does a woman need a reason to see her wife?” River asked back. The Doctor wanted to argue that she could have simply called, but River kept talking: “There is a haunted asteroid I wanted to take you to. Since it is October on earth right now it’s quite fitting, isn’t it?”

The Doctor was intrigued. “A haunted asteroid?” she asked. “When?”

“About two million years in the future” River said. “So are we going?” she asked.

“Of course we are!” the Doctor said. 

She let River fly the TARDIS, trusting her to bring them safe to their destination. The ship was flying smoother than usual, probably as happy to see River as she was. It didn’t take long until they landed again. The Doctor jumped up and pulled her wife outside by her hand. 

They were standing in an overgrown garden in front of a huge Victorian looking mansion. She was about to ask River if she had taken a wrong turn, when she noticed, that the sky was redder than usual and she could feel the gravity being slightly too light. They were not on earth.

“Is this it?” she asked, looking up into the dark windows of the mansion.

“Spooky, isn’t it?” River said. “This used to be a hotel. They imitated live on earth after humanity had left, but now only the building remains” she explained.

On a second glance the Doctor noticed that some of the architecture wasn’t historically accurate. It was a good imitation nothing less. 

“So what is the haunted part?” she asked exited.

“Oh you’ll see” River said teasingly. “Shall we?” she offered her arm. 

The Doctor took it as they walked towards the massive front door. She had to use her full strength to open it. As soon as they entered, the door fell shut again, making a sound that suspiciously sounded like a closing lock. The doctor twirled around and tried to sonic it. She couldn’t get any data.

“It’s always wood” she said annoyed. She tried to push the door open but failed. “Mind helping me?” she asked River, who was watching her amused. Her lack of concern helped the Doctor to feel calmer. The two of them tried to push open the door together, but it was no use. They were locked in.

“What now?” the Doctor asked. She examined their surroundings. The room was sparely lit by what looked like candles, which the Doctor supposed were electrical lights for them to still be burning. The room, even though it was made to fit the rest of the buildings style, was doubtlessly a hotel’s reception. River walked towards the desks and the Doctor followed her.

“Places like this usually have a second entry for staff and deliveries” River said as she jumped over the desk into the staff’s area. “We’ll just have to find it”.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” the Doctor asked.

River grinned. “As long as you are with me I’ll be safe” she said.

The Doctor blushed, but the argument seemed a little weak. “River wait!” she said as she followed her.

Even the private rooms were built in the same style as the rest of the mansion. The wooden floor creaked under their steps as they entered a hallway. It was darker back here than it had been in the reception. The doctor assumed that these rooms had mainly been used by the hotel’s androids back when the place was in business. Now that the hotel was abandoned it gave everything a creepy vibe. 

“Why did you say the hotel was haunted again?” the Doctor asked a little worried. River was not the superstitious type. 

“Weird things keep happening to the people who try to investigate this place” she said. “There is obviously the usual ghost sightings, but apparently people who tried to demolish the mansion or the surrounding area have been physically hurt. Broken bones and such things” River shrugged. 

“Did anyone specify what attacked them?” the Doctor asked.

“That’s the fun part” River said. “The reports sound like they came straight out of a cheap horror movie. Moving suits of armor, transparent women in old fashioned dresses that walk through walls. You get the idea”.

The Doctor shivered. “Any proves?” she asked.

“No” River admitted. “That’s why I thought the two of us should take a look at this”. 

They had arrived at the top of a staircase. It led into a basement that was completely dark.

“Dare to go down there?” River asked teasingly.

The Doctor ripped of a candle from the wall. 

“You bet!” she said. 

River took her arm and they walked down the stairs. Even with the light of the candle the Doctor was holding, they could barely make out their surroundings. The room smelled musty and it was colder down here than upstairs. The flickering candle made the shadows move. They stopped at the bottom of the stairs to wait for their eyes to get used to the darkness. Something made the Doctor shiver and it took a moment before she realized what it was. The sound of footsteps hadn’t stopped with them. River froze and her grip tightened around her arm. She heard it too. The steps came closer and then stopped.

“I don’t like this” the Doctor said.

“Let’s check it out” River said, pulling her into the direction of the noise.

The Doctor followed hesitant. She was curious, but walking right into the arms of whatever followed them didn’t seem like the best idea. Still, she didn’t want to admit she was scared in front of River. A door lead into a room on their left, which was the direction they heard the footsteps from. They found themselves standing in front of a huge suit of armor. 

“You don’t think this thing was…” River asked perplex.

The Doctor soniced it. “Metal, nothing else” she declared. 

Still eying the strange decoration wary, the two of them walked towards the door on the other side of the room. As soon as they had turned their backs to the suit of armor the Doctor could hear a metallic screeching behind them. “Oh no!” the Doctor thought when she heard the first heavy step.

“River” she said, taking her wife, who stared at something behind them in horror, by the hand, “Run”.

They ran through an endless maze of rooms until the Doctor could no longer tell where they had come from. Once they could no longer hear any footsteps following them, they sank against a wall.

“Metal, nothing else, huh?” River asked.

The doctor nodded worried. “It was no lifeform. I should have been able to tell otherwise” she said. “I’ve been able to identify lifeforms beyond most people’s comprehension with my sonic screwdriver”.

River frowned. She seemed less confident than before. “Then what was it?” she asked.

“I don’t know” the Doctor admitted. 

She felt like there had to be a simple explanation, but for some reason the mansion unsettled her in a way that made it hard to concentrate. Her heartrate calmed a little and she started to examine their surroundings. The room they were in was mostly empty. The only remarkable thing was the wall they were leaning against. It was covered by a gigantic mirror. The Doctor looked into her own eyes. She always felt alienated to her reflection, even though she quite liked who she currently was. Somehow something about the woman in the mirror felt more wrong than usually, but she couldn’t quite put her finger onto it.

She looked over at River’s reflection, who was fiddling with the candle to make its light burn brighter. Her wife was unusually pale. The doctor had never seen her like that. Could it be that she was even more scared than she was?

“River…” the Doctor wanted to say something comforting when River’s reflection suddenly turned her head and looked at her with completely black eyes. The Doctor screamed and jumped up, the real River right beside her. Her own reflection rose significantly slower, blood running out of her eyes. It stretched its hand out, moving its lips like it wanted to say something.

River reacted faster than the Doctor. She kicked the mirror with full force. The reflections flickered and dissolved as it shattered into a thousand pieces. The Doctor could hear an electrical buzzing. At second glance thin wires were sticking out of the pieces on the floor. She soniced them.

“It’s a screen!” she said relieved. 

River investigate the wall closer and found a tiny camera in the cement. She crushed it between her fingers.

“Who does this?” she asked. The doctor had no answer.

“Anyway,” River said, collecting herself after the shock, “this is probably not the work of ghosts”.

“Right” the Doctor said, kicking some of the shards on the floor. Suddenly she remembered something. “You said people who vandalized this place got hurt”.

Rivers eyes widened. “Let’s hope that’s just another ghost-story” she said.

The doctor felt like with her usual luck that was quite a lot to hope for. “Come on. We’ll find out who’s behind this before we can get in real danger” she said.

Being completely lost anyway they decided to leave the room through a different door than they had come from. They entered what once must have been a wine cellar. Shelves full of dusty bottles covered the walls. Carefully they crept towards the door on the other side. The doctor could hear a similar buzzing than in the room before. She used her sonic screwdriver to scan the room. Most of it was historically accurate made out of wood, which limited the usefulness of her screwdriver. Then she noticed some readings of an electrical device in a corner. She walked closer and saw another miniature camera. She picked it off the wall and crushed it under her boot.

“Someone is watching us” she said.

River shivered. “Some asshole is probably getting kicks out of seeing us scared like this” she said.

They went on and entered a long hallway. It was better lit than the rooms they had been in before. On their side were multiple small doors, similar to the one they had come through. The door on the other side was bigger and looked much heavier.

“This might be the service entrance!” River said. 

Confident she started crossing the hallway. The Doctor was right behind her. Once they passed about half of it they heard a loud mechanical noise. The Doctor was unable to tell where it had come from. It seemed to be all around them. Looking to the roof to find the source of the sound she stepped into emptiness. A silent scream was on her lips as she fell forwards. 

River caught her upper arm and pulled her against her chest. The Doctor held onto her in horror. All around them the floor had started to disappear. Without wasting any time to talk they took each other’s hands and ran towards the door. River threw herself against it, but it wouldn’t open.

“It’s locked!” she shouted panicked.

The Doctor tried to open it with her sonic screwdriver even though she knew it was no use. More and more parts of the floor disappeared. Desperately the Doctor looked for another exit. Finally she looked up and saw what looked like an air vent. 

“River! Above us!” she shouted as she unlocked it with her sonic.

River produced a grappling gun somewhere from her coat and pulled the two of them up. They climbed into the air vents. With a last glance the Doctor could see the last tiles of the floor dissolve.

“Whatever this is, it doesn’t want us to go yet” she said drily. 

The vents were wide enough for a human to comfortably crawl through them. They must have been out of use for some time since everything was full of dust. They passed multiple mostly empty basement rooms. The Doctor wondered why a hotel could possibly need that much storage room. At some points the vents led upwards. They were inside the walls on the ground floor now. 

The Doctor used her sonic to regain some sort of orientation when she noticed some unusual data. Multiple electrical fields were generated only a few hundred meters in front of them. 

“Come on, I believe we are getting closer to the center of this” she whispered.

Soon she found a room below them that looked completely different from everything else they had seen in the building. It was full of, what the Doctor assumed, must have been slightly outdated technology for this time. The walls were filled with screens broadcasting live video from multiple rooms of the hotel. The Doctor recognized the room where they had found the suit of armor that alarmingly was missing now. Multiple blocks of servers were scattered around the room, processing what must be an immense amount of data. The Doctor couldn’t see any lifeform in the room, so she decided to climb down. River followed her.

“Looks like some kind of control panel” she said.

The Doctor nodded. “But what would they need it for?” she asked.

“Let’s find out” she said, already trying to hack into one of the computers. She was in her element as an archeologist. The Doctor settled for investigating the parts of the room that had been out of her view from above. 

“I found it” River called. “Looks like they used this place to control their androids”.

“Like this guy?” the Doctor asked, pulling a robot in what looked like the remains of a butler’s suit into the center of the room. She had found him laying behind the servers. “Looks like he ran out of power” she said.

River frowned and looked like she wanted to say something, but she was interrupted by the sound of heavy footsteps. They seemed to be coming closer. In panic they looked around, hoping that whatever was coming was caught on camera. 

“There!” River called, pointing towards a screen. 

The suit of armor from earlier was slowly walking down a corridor. Based on the sound it wasn’t that far away.

“I don’t like this” River said. 

Suddenly the Doctor realized something. She could hit herself for not noticing earlier. It was right there.

“This thing is another Robot!” she said.

“Right. How does that help?” River asked.

“We should be able to turn it off from here” she explained, already examining the controls. River joined her. The steps were now right in front of the door. The Doctor had to force herself to concentrate on finding the right switch. 

She found it and quickly pressed it. She waited for the footsteps to stop, when suddenly River screamed. The Doctor twirled around. The robotic butler she thought had been deactivated had grabbed River by the hair, pulling her head down from the back.

“Don’t move” it said in a low screeching voice. Its voice circuit must have been broken. 

The Doctor put her hands up, knowing when to surrender. She had to stop the situation from escalating. Thankfully the steps outside the door had stopped. She hoped she had deactivated the giant suit of armor.

“Step away from the controls” the Robot ordered. 

The Doctor obeyed. She could see Rivers hand slowly moving towards her pocket. She was planning to do something! The Doctor only had to distract the Butler. 

“Are you the one responsible for the hauntings?” she asked.

The Robot made a screeching sound, which, as the doctor realized, was supposed to be laughter.

“Yes” it said. “Humans are so easily scared. I already learned that when I was working for the hotel”.

“But why?” the Doctor asked.

The Robots grip tightened and River let out a little scream.

“Boredom” it said. “When the place closed they left me behind. No one even bothered to turn me off. But the ghost sightings attracted many people. I decided to have a little fun with them”.

“Let us go then!” the Doctor said. “I know you don’t want to cause any harm”. 

“Oh no,” it said, “I can’t let you go. You know that there are no real ghosts here. But don’t worry. I will make sure to make an attraction out of your served heads”.

The Doctor wanted to argue when suddenly she heard a loud noise. River had produced a gun from her pocket and shot the Robot right through its head. It twitched and then shut off. The Doctor looked at her in horror.

“Oh don’t give me that look” River said. “It was a machine! And it threatened to kill both of us” she argued.

The Doctor frowned. “You know I don’t like those things” she said, pointing to the gun. Then with a kinder voice she added: “Thanks for saving us, though”. She helped River to untangle the Robot fingers from her hair. 

“We should be able to open the door from here” River said.

They found the mechanism quickly. The deactivated suit of armor stood in front of the control room. It didn’t move as they walked past it this time and the sonic screwdriver confirmed, that here was no power left running through it. Arm in arm they walked back to the TARDIS.

“That was exiting, wasn’t it?” River asked.

The Doctor giggled from the understatement. “Admit it. You were scared!” she said.

“Me?” River asked in playful astonishment. “I was just pretending to be so it would be less embarrassing for you, Doctor” she said. The two of them laughed.

“So where do you want to go next?” the Doctor asked as they left the building.

“Wherever you are going” River replied.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for Reading! English is not my first language, but I hope there were not too many mistakes left. I love River and this won’t be the last thing I write about her and the 13th Doctor. (Don’t @ me, I’m gay). I would love to hear your opinions!
> 
> Here is a list of the scary plot elements if you want to check for triggers:  
\- There is a dark basement  
\- There is a walking suit of armor  
\- There are images in a mirror that are moving on their own (bloody eyes and stuff)  
\- There is disappearing ground  
\- There is an evil robot  
\- There are no real ghosts in this story


End file.
